What is CycleStreets?

CycleStreets is a UK-wide cycle journey planner system, which lets you plan routes from A to B by bike. It is designed by cyclists, for cyclists, and caters for the needs of both confident and less confident cyclists.

CycleStreets is currently in beta

This site is currently at a beta testing phase so that cyclists around the country can test out routes and let us know about any problems they find on the site, before we launch officially.

Problems we already know about in this release are:

DONE - Photos on planned routes are not being shown yet

DONE - Traffic lights and crossings are not being taken account of fully yet

DONE - Journeys planned on the old Camcycle system are not yet properly imported

DONE - Accounting for the delay caused by hills

DONE - Speeding up the system in London and other dense areas

Avoiding wiggly routes. (The time taken to turn left and right is not accounted for - leading to wiggly routes).

Banned turn restrictions are not yet in place in the routing engine (but one-way streets are handled correctly)

Origins

CycleStreets is effectively a national version of the Journey Planner and Photomap launched by Cambridge Cycling Campaign in June 2006.

Following a presentation of the Cambridge-only system at the CCN/CTC Conference in November 2006 in Cheltenham, we have received many enquiries from people and organisations around the UK (and beyond) about the possibilty of having a version where they live. Since then we have worked to produce a national system, which also has versions that are specific to a particular area.

Who created and runs CycleStreets?

The system has been created by Simon Nuttall, (Routemaster - focussing on routing quality and performance) and Martin Lucas-Smith, (Webmaster - focussing on usability and code structure). Both of us are regular bicycle users, based in Cambridge, and we've been involved with Cambridge Cycling Campaign for many years.

CycleStreets is a run as a company (on a not-for-profit basis) to manage incoming funds.

We also plan to release the code as an Open Source project and encourage others to get involved.

How can I get one for my town/city?

If you are a Local Authority we will negotiate a charge with you if you want it under your domain name, which will go towards the server costs and programming time that keep the system running and developed.

If you are a local campaign group, just get in touch and we will sort it out. Donations would be welcome.

It is possible to have area-specific 'branding' when setting up yourarea.cyclestreets.net. Also we should be able to set up the system on a domain name of your choice, but still run on our servers to save you the need for maintenance expertise or time.

Where does the map data come from?

The map data is from OpenStreetMap which is an ongoing project to map the world. We are immensely grateful to all the volunteers who have created the base data. Please consider donating to OpenStreetMap.

Non-profit cycling promotion business ChangingPace, who saw the potential of the work done in Cambridge and persuaded the Scottish Government's Sustainable Transport section to give a small grant (with the help of Cycling Scotland) to develop an Edinburgh version of the system. We are very grateful for their assistance.

Mythic Beasts, our web hosts, who kindly donated a free colo machine and bandwidth to act as the development system.

David Earl from Cambridge Cycling Campaign who has helped with the signin package and licensing issues (not to mention mapping all of Cambridge in superb quality for OpenStreetMap!)

Francis Irving for invaluable help in diagnosing server performance issues